What Tourists Search on Google About Eilat: A Demand Map by Season
The thing people search most together with Eilat is a hotel. After that come hotels by name, the weather and shops. We checked five years of searches from Israel in Google Trends and gathered the demand map here. Which months bring the most searches, what people actually type, and what a business in Eilat can do with it in every season of the year.
How we checked and what the index measures
Google Trends is a free Google tool that shows how much a term is searched over time. It does not give absolute numbers but an interest index on a scale of 0 to 100. The strongest week in the period you check gets 100 and everything else is measured relative to it. At the end of August 2026 we checked the term Eilat in searches from Israel over five years and calculated an average for every month of the year.
It is important to understand what goes into the index. It counts everyone who typed Eilat into Google. A tourist planning a vacation, a resident looking for a shop, and also someone reading the news. That is why later in the article we also look at what people type together with the word Eilat. There you can see clearly that most of the searching is touristic. Hotels, weather and shopping.
When people search Eilat the most
The curve is clear. August is the strongest month of the year with an average of 75 points and July is right behind it with 73. April, the Passover month, reaches 70. On the other side sit the winter months. January at 39 and December at 42. The gap between peak and low is almost double. At the level of single weeks it is even sharper. The strongest week in all five years was the Passover week of April 2026, followed by the mid August weeks of 2024 and 2025 and the Sukkot week of October 2022.
This curve lines up with the official lodging numbers. According to the monthly data of the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, hotel room occupancy in Eilat reached 91.6% in July 2024 while in January of that year it stood at 61.8%. The Passover effect shows there just as sharply. A jump to 80.4% in April 2024 from 70.7% in March. More on these numbers in our article on Eilat tourism numbers. The searches and the beds tell the same story. A peak at Passover and in summer, a low in winter.
The important point for a business is that the search comes before the arrival. Expedia Group research found that the average traveler views about 141 pages of travel content in the 45 days before booking. That is a lot of searching before a single shekel is paid. Your site needs to be ranked when the curve starts climbing, not in the middle of the season. Promotion work that starts in June meets Google after the tourists have already booked.
What people type together with Eilat
We pulled from Trends the list of searches most related to the term Eilat across those five years. You can read it like a menu of intents. Every row is a customer at a different stage of the vacation.
| What they search | Category | What it means for a business in Eilat |
|---|---|---|
| Eilat hotel. Eilat hotels. Booking Eilat | Lodging | The strongest search at index 100. Whoever shows up when people compare hotels meets the tourist at the start of planning |
| Specific hotels by name | Brand | A large share of lodging searches are for one hotel by its name. The game there is reputation and reviews |
| Eilat weather | Planning | A before-the-trip question. Content that answers planning questions catches the tourist early |
| Names of shops and malls | Shopping | Shopping is a fixed part of an Eilat vacation. Also because of the VAT exemption |
Why restaurants and attractions are missing from the list
The striking absence from the top of the list is small businesses. There is no recommended restaurant in Eilat there and no diving or water sports. That does not mean people do not search for these things. They search a lot, just in many different phrasings. One types restaurants in Eilat, another looks for where to eat in Eilat with kids, and a third asks ChatGPT instead. Each phrasing alone is too small for the top of the list but together it is a whole market.
For a small business this is the good news of the article. Chains with big budgets compete over Eilat hotel. Over the long, precise questions there is almost no competition. A page that answers exactly such a question can reach the first page without a chain budget. How to do that in practice is in our guide on promoting a business in Eilat.
There is one more reason these searches do not show in our check. Many of them happen inside Eilat itself. Google travel research found that 85% of travelers decide on activities only after arriving at the destination. The tourist sits at the hotel with a phone and searches where to eat nearby. For these searches an updated Google Business Profile with good reviews is worth more than any page on your site.
We see this with our clients from every direction. A water sports club that people reach from searches about activities at sea. A transfer company that stands in front of whoever searches how to get there. In each of these cases the business did not try to compete over the word Eilat but over the exact question its customer asks.
The fastest rising searches: iPhone models
Trends has one more list. Rising searches. These are terms that jumped recently compared with the period before them. In the Eilat list the picture is unambiguous and a little amusing. Almost all of it is iPhone models. iPhone 14 Pro Eilat. iPhone 17 Pro Max Eilat and so on, model after model.
The reason is clear. In Eilat you do not pay VAT under the Eilat Free Trade Zone Law, and since VAT in Israel rose to 18% at the start of 2025 the gap has only grown. On an expensive product like a phone the difference is hundreds of shekels. People check the price of the exact model they want before they even reach the city, and the purchase waits for the vacation. Worth knowing that the exemption does not cover everything. Private cars, cigarettes and televisions for example are outside the list.
A business that sells products in Eilat has a simple lesson here. The tourist arrives with a shopping list and searches for the product by name together with the word Eilat. A page on your site with the sought-after models and their price in Eilat answers exactly that search. This is true for phones, for sports equipment, for sunglasses and for any product where the VAT difference is felt.
Tourists from abroad search differently
Everything we saw so far was measured in searches from Israel, mostly in Hebrew. A tourist from Europe types Eilat in Latin letters and asks different questions. Things to do in Eilat. The weather in winter. How to get from the airport. And they search in the opposite season. The European flight season to Eilat runs from autumn to spring, because while their home is frozen, January in Eilat offers more than 23 degrees Celsius by day according to the measurements of the Israeli Meteorological Service. In the years before the war, hundreds of charter flights landed at Ramon airport every winter from Moscow, Budapest, Warsaw and other cities in eastern Europe, and the state of Israel even subsidizes every incoming passenger to encourage this route. The state of international flights keeps changing in recent years but the demand pattern itself is stable. Europeans look for sun in winter.
This audience also plans far ahead. In a Booking.com survey of more than 12 thousand European travelers, 30% book their trip three to four months in advance and another 26% book one to two months ahead. A tourist landing in Eilat in January is searching for it already in September, so the English pages need to be live and ranked by autumn.
The practical meaning is that a business that wants this audience needs pages in English. Not machine translation of the site but pages that answer the questions this tourist actually asks. We expanded on this in our guide on a website for a tourism business. Whoever has a good English page works with an audience most of their competitors never even see.
What to do with the map in every season
A demand map is worth something only if it changes the order of work. This is how we recommend splitting the year by the curve.
- November to February. Israeli search is at its low, so these are the building months. New pages, content and reviews go up now to be ranked when the curve climbs. At the same time this is exactly the peak season of the European audience, so the English pages work now
- March and April. Passover is the peak search week of the whole year. Everything built in winter meets the demand now. It is also the time to make sure the Google Business Profile is updated with holiday hours
- May to September. The Israeli summer peak with August on top. The work now is operations. Answer enquiries fast, collect reviews from every satisfied customer and let the automations run
- October. The Tishrei holidays bring one last strong wave. After it the curve goes down and it is time to sum up the season. What brought enquiries and what will not enter next year’s plan. How to build that plan is in the Eilat marketing calendar
Sources and verification
As in every article on this blog, every number here was checked against its source. This is how we checked this time.
- Google Trends. Our own check at the end of August 2026 for the term Eilat in searches from Israel over the last five years. The monthly averages, the peak weeks, the related searches list and the rising searches list all come from this check
- The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, media release 032/2025 on tourist hotel stays. Monthly occupancy in Eilat in 2024. 91.6% in July, 61.8% in January and the Passover jump from 70.7% in March to 80.4% in April
- The Eilat Free Trade Zone Law (Exemptions and Tax Discounts) 1985, full text on the Nevo legal database. The VAT exemption and also the list of goods excluded from it. The VAT rise to 18% from 1.1.2025 was verified against regulatory updates of Israeli law firms
- The Israeli Meteorological Service. Official monthly summaries. The average maximum temperature in Eilat in January 2023 was 23.6 degrees and in June 2025 39.6 degrees
- International and Israeli aviation coverage. The European charter season to Eilat from autumn to spring, Ramon airport’s leading winter destinations before the war and the Tourism Ministry subsidy per incoming passenger. Cross-checked between ynet, Globes and Aviation Week
- Traveler behavior research. The Expedia Group Path to Purchase report on 141 pages of content in the 45 days before booking. Google travel research on the 85% who decide on activities at the destination itself. The Booking.com survey of 12,705 European travelers on booking lead times
This is exactly what we do at SEO in Eilat. If you want us to go over it together for your business, write to us.
Frequently asked questions
Eilat hotel is the strongest related search at index 100 in Google Trends. After it come searches for specific hotels by name, Eilat weather and names of shops and malls. Lodging searches dominate the list by a wide margin.
Passover and mid August. In our five year check the strongest week was the Passover week of April 2026, followed by mid August weeks. At the month level August leads with an average of 75 and July with 73, while January is at the low with 39.
Because in Eilat you do not pay VAT under the Eilat Free Trade Zone Law. People check what the exact model they want costs in Eilat before the trip and postpone the purchase to the vacation. Every new model that comes out creates such a wave of searches.
No. They type Eilat in Latin letters and ask different questions, like things to do in Eilat. They also arrive in the opposite season, mainly in winter. A business that wants this audience needs English pages that answer these questions.
You do not compete over Eilat hotel but over the long, precise questions. Where to eat in Eilat with kids. Sea activities for beginners. These phrasings have almost no competition, and a page that answers them exactly can reach the first page without a big budget.
A relative scale of 0 to 100, not an absolute number of searches. The strongest week in the period you check gets 100 and everything else is measured relative to it. The index is excellent for comparing seasons and trends but it does not say exactly how many people searched.
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